Ed Stannardhttps://www.ctpost.com/author/ed-stannard/
https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Ataturk-s-landing-100-years-ago-celebrated-13855116.php
article13855116
NEW HAVEN — On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk stepped off a ship at Samsun, Turkey, on the Black Sea, after a three-day trip from Istanbul, and launched the Turkish War of Independence against the allies who had divided up the territory that had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire before it collapsed in World War I.

A century later, on Sunday, Turkish Americans by the score — perhaps the hundreds — will come to New Haven to celebrate the founding four years later of the modern Turkish republic, which Ataturk established as a democratic, secular state.

They’re coming to 560 Middletown Ave., home of Feray Gokcek, a vegetable wholesaler and Turkish immigrant, because that’s where an 11-foot-high bronze statue of Ataturk stands, with the U.S. and Turkish flags waving overhead.

Four years later, “he put in the country democracy and a secular system,” Gokcek said of Ataturk. “That’s why it’s a special day.”

Gokcek is part of the secular Turkish community. He and the others who will come from as far as southern New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester County, N.Y., Rhode Island and Massachusetts oppose the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has encouraged the practice of Islam but also has been accused of bringing a more autocratic rule to the country.

In mayoral elections March 31, the opposition party made gains, including in the capital of Ankara and in Erdogan’s hometown of Istanbul, largely because the country is in the midst of a major recession, according...

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Fri, 17 May 2019 23:36:56 UThttps://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Politics-art-combine-in-work-of-new-Yale-13847182.php
article13847182
NEW HAVEN — Meleko Mokgosi, who combines social and political questions in his painting and related projects, has been named associate professor in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art.

“As an artist and an educator, Meleko Mokgosi is dedicated to an expanded language of aesthetic and historical references while building on the necessary tools to build a sustainable and critical studio practice,” said Dean Marta Kuzma in a press release. “His regard for the larger political ramifications of techniques of production explore the conceptual foregrounding of painting and in doing so, his approach challenges the way in which many graduate students grapple with negotiating critical social questions within their artist practice.”

Mokgosi, a native of Botswana, is coming to Yale in July from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, where he is assistant professor. According to the elease, his approach is “positioned between cinema studies, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and post-colonial studies.”

His work, including the six-year project “Democratic Intuition,” is created within “chapters,” which he said investigate “how democracy materializes in the daily lived experience of the black subject, both in the American context and in southern Africa.” He aims to balance theory and practice and is working on a monograph tentatively titled “Flesh Tones: The Politics of Painting Skin.”

The project is composed of interview with artists about how they approach the “complexities of rendering skin tone in developing the idea of the black subject within painting,” according to the release.

Fentanyl, 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin, has become the drug of choice for those addicted to opioids, outstripping heroin and other drugs. In 2018, 760 of the 1,017 opioid-related deaths involved one or more forms of fentanyl. In 2015, only 189 of 729 deaths were fentanyl-related.

Hearst Connecticut Media reviewed the detailed data about the 3,701 opioid-related deaths over four years, from the chief state medical examiner’s office. They paint a picture, in numbers, of a tragedy that is exploding by the year.

The individual cases were analyzed according to the city or town where the deceased lived, not where they died. What they reveal destroys the stereotypes that the opioid scourge is an urban problem or one that primarily afflicts the African-American community.

Every corner of Connecticut

What Connecticut’s numbers show is that opioid abuse is just as devastating in Sharon, in the northwest corner, population 2,718, as it is in nearby Torrington, which is almost 13 times its size, or in New London, 95 miles away. Only 10 small towns in Connecticut have had no deaths from opioid overdoses in the last four years.

“It clearly is not an inner-city problem,” said Dr. Michael Werdmann, an emergency physician at Bridgeport Hospital, where 53 percent of those who come to the emergency department with narcotic overdose as their chief complaint live in Bridgeport.

“They still have that kind of image, that it’s an urban or an inner-city problem, and what this suggests is that...

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Sun, 12 May 2019 18:12:19 UThttps://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Franklin-Graham-tour-bringing-gospel-anti-LGBTQ-13835994.php
article13835994
The Rev. Franklin Graham, most recently in the news for calling on presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to repent because he is gay, will bring his Decision America Northeast Tour to Seaside Park in Bridgeport on May 28.

Traveling to seven Northeast cities in a lobster-emblazoned tour bus, Graham plans to call on Christians “to proclaim the Gospel and join believers to pray for our nation, our communities, and the lost,” according to his website. The Christian musician Crowder will provide music and the evening will end with fireworks.

Graham will bring his evangelical message to the most “post-Christian” section of the country, according to a Barna survey, from Portland, Maine, to Syracuse, N.Y., starting May 19. That message is that Christians must commit themselves to Jesus as Lord and savior and follow traditional biblical views about morality.

But Christians who welcome LGBTQ people into their congregations and the clergy who perform their weddings — Connecticut legalized same-sex marriage in 2008 — say Graham is improperly inserting himself into politics. Pastors of parishes whose members will be attending and volunteering at his Bridgeport rally also express concerns, while welcoming his call to follow the good news of Jesus Christ.

“I don’t think it’s so much about Franklin Graham, but the message,” said Pastor Mark Smith of North Park Baptist Church in Bridgeport, many of whose members have been trained as volunteers to respond to people who answer the “altar call” to come forward and commit themselves to Jesus. “He wants to bring a...

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Sun, 12 May 2019 04:00:00 UThttps://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Numbers-reveal-the-diversity-of-those-who-died-of-13836197.php
article13836197
The roll of the dead in Connecticut as a result of the exploding opioid epidemic tells a lot about the victims and how they died, with no names attached. The list of 3,701 deaths between 2015 and 2018 reveals some facts that can’t be seen any other way.

Because many people die of opioid overdose in a hospital or where they ingested the drug, Hearst Connecticut Media looked at the individual deaths according to where the deceased lived.

Of 169 towns and cities in Connecticut, only 10 did not record an opioid-related death in the four years: Colebrook, Morris and Roxbury in Litchfield County; Sherman in Fairfield County; Hartland in Hartford County; Bozrah and Lyme in New London County; Pomfret and Scotland in Windham County; and Union, the smallest town in the state with 839 residents, in Tolland County. Only Sherman and Pomfret in that group have more than 3,000 residents.

The ages of those who died ranged from a 15-year-old who died in 2016, which news reports have identified as Olivia Elizabeth Roark of Griswold, to an 84-year-old Hartford man, who died in 2018.

The average age was just under 42 years, 3 months, and those who died in Connecticut came from at least 25 other states, from Alabama to California, and from Oklahoma to South Dakota.

Litchfield County, with 229 deaths over four years, had the highest average number, 3.14 per 10,000 residents, followed by New London, 324, 3.01; Hartford, 1,002, 2.80; New Haven, 924, 2.68; Windham, 133, 2.86; Middlesex, 156, 2.39; Tolland, 116, 1.91; and Fairfield, 576, 1.52. The average for the state was 2.56 per 10,000 residents.

White males make up the largest group by far, with 2,120 over four years, followed by 756 white females, 367 Hispanic males, 245 black males, 79...

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Sun, 12 May 2019 04:00:00 UThttps://www.ctpost.com/shoreline/article/Muslim-chaplain-brings-message-of-unity-13823591.php
article13823591
MADISON — It’s the one-on-one encounters, when people meet others as individuals, that break down stereotypes and suspicions of others, according to Celene Ibrahim, the Muslim chaplain at Tufts University, who will appear at Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in June.

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan began in this country at sundown Sunday, lasting until June 4, and “One Nation, Indivisible,” which she edited and which was published in March, is her contribution to the battle against Islamophobia, which has been on the increase in the past several years.

“It’s a collection of artists and activists and scholars of religion and preachers and poets” who, each in his or her own way, “have been pushing back on Islamophobia,” Ibrahim said. Not all of the contributors are Muslim. Some describe their interactions or work with Muslims. All the essays are about “promoting values like hospitality, welcoming the stranger and the courage to cross identity divides,” she said. All promote “the values of love and care.”

The cover illustration, in which a minaret, topped by the Islamic crescent, extends into the 50-star canton of the American flag, “is very provocative, and I hope people pick it up out of a sense of curiosity,” Ibrahim said. “If people come to it with a good intention, they’ll find stories that resonate with them and that’s the point, to recognize our common humanity and recognize our differences.

“Ramadan is a beautiful moment for that because the emphasis is on hospitality and solidifying communal bonds and...

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Mon, 6 May 2019 22:32:38 UThttps://www.ctpost.com/news/article/New-Haven-police-say-city-offer-puts-them-at-13817871.php
article13817871
NEW HAVEN — If the city police union had accepted the most recent contract offer by the city, its officers would have been the lowest paid among a group of 12 departments in lower-income municipalities, union President Florencio Cotto Jr. said Friday at anews conference, standing in front of dozens of plainclothes officers outside police headquarters.

According to information distributed at the event at 1 Union Ave., the city’s April 18 offer of 2 percent increases this year and next, with no retroactive pay, would mean the top salary would be $71,056 in 2020. The officers have worked without a contract since 2015. The starting salary now is $44,400. The cost of health insurance also has been a point of contention in negotiations.

“We’ll be the lowest of the lowest of the lowest in the state of Connecticut,” Cotto said. He said the union had asked Mayor Toni Harp for the city’s last, best offer before it would trigger arbitration. “Before we go to arbitration, give us the best you can do,” Cotto said the mayor was told. The union then overwhelmingly rejected the 4 percent increase through 2020.

“We took her at her word, when our membership rejected that offer ... we were in arbitration,” Cotto said. The union voted to go into arbitration in July 2018.

“Contrary to the mayor’s suggestion, the union is again willing to sit down and settle this contract as it always has been,” Cotto said.

Mayoral spokesman Laurence Grotheer said Friday, “As far as the city is concerned, the Elm City Local can pursue one of two strategies. Either they can continue with the arbitration process, which has been going on now for over a year, will take several more months, and seems to be frustrating union leadership, or they can...

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Sat, 4 May 2019 04:17:34 UThttps://www.ctpost.com/news/article/New-Haven-pushing-20-cut-in-car-use-emissions-13814356.php
article13814356
NEW HAVEN — The city and state have lots of options to get around without emitting greenhouse gases into the air. On Thursday, city transit advocates made a push to get more people to use them.

Trains, buses, bikes for rent, even good old walking from place to place are ways residents can contribute to reducing traffic and the harm cars cause the environment.

“The 2020 initiative seeks to increase awareness about the range of transportation options available in New Haven,” Harp said in calling for 20 percent less driving and a reduction in greenhouse gases by the end of 2020.

“There will be outreach efforts to try to engage businesses and organizations in the 2020 campaign,” she said.

Hausladen suggested “Transit Tuesday” as a way to get more people out of their cars. “It’s going to be addictive. You’re going to do it again,” he said.

It’s important, he said, because while 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions nationally come from the transportation sector, it’s 40 percent in Connecticut. “Addressing this sector can produce significant gains in meeting our greenhouse gas reduction goals as a state and as a country,” he said.

“The state of Connecticut is 50 percent higher in the transportation sector than the national average” in single-occupancy...

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Thu, 2 May 2019 20:25:56 UThttps://www.ctpost.com/news/article/838-million-Neurosciences-Center-planned-for-St-13804519.php
article13804519
NEW HAVEN — An $838 million Neurosciences Center at Yale New Haven Hospital’s St. Raphael campus will make the hospital a leading center for the research and care of Parkinson’s disease, stroke and other brain-related disorders, officials of Yale New Haven Health, the city and Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday.

The 505,000-square-foot center will bring in $11.9 million to the city: $8.9 million in prepaid building fees next fiscal year and $3 million this year as a one-time payment to help reduce health care costs for city employees. Officials said the city and health care system are working to reduce those costs for city workers in the future.

In addition to focusing on neuroscience research and treatment of neurological diseases, the project will move 204 patient beds out of shared rooms in the East Pavilion, which was the section of the Hospital of St. Raphael built in 1953.

“We are working to provide a patient experience that meets or exceeds our patients’ expectations,” said Marna Borgstrom, CEO of Yale New Haven Health and the hospital. “Being sick and being in a room with roommates no longer delights our patients, as you can imagine.”

She said the center would provide care for conditions from “stroke to movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease to complex brain abnormalities.” The center will “bring the most challenging neurological diseases to the forefront … marshaling the exceptional science of our colleagues at the Yale School of Medicine.”

Borgstrom, Lamont, Mayor Toni Harp and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers all said the hospital had worked closely with the West River neighborhood in planning the project. Borgstrom said Yale New Haven worked “in partnership with our community and...

Hanging on the pedestrian bridge between the Air Rights Garage and Yale New Haven Hospital, it reads: “RED means STOP. Our lives depend on it.”

Adorned with a traffic signal and the city’s orange Street Smarts logo, it’s the latest attempt to get drivers to slow down in one of the busiest sections of the city.

“This is sort of a joint effort from a lot of different people because we can’t get red-light cameras in this state,” said Dr. Kirsten Bechtel, a pediatrician and chairwoman of the Yale Traffic Safety Subcommittee, on Monday, a day after the banner was hung. “It’s an intersection that our committee has been worried about since our inception in 2011.”

Bechtel said the committee has heard that two vehicles run the red light at South Frontage and York Street every cycle, at speeds that endanger patients and their visitors, hospital employees and others.

“It’s part of our ongoing education for our Street Smarts campaign to get folks to slow down and recognize that people are using the roads,” he said. “It is a constant request for traffic enforcement and speed enforcement” in the area. He said he thinks the cost was less than $4,000.

“We don’t have red-light cameras. In fact, we have terrible laws … that people...